Doing Crime: A Kat Makris Greek Mafia Novel Read online

  “She wants to know where I keep the toilet paper,” I said. “Who is this friend of yours? A policeman?” My heart did a few pull-ups. It knew I had a house full of guns, counterfeit passports, and the invisible stain of a dead cop on the living room rug. Fortunately, these guys didn’t have x-ray vision. On the outside I was cool; I’d had a lot of practice lately. So what if I’d almost become one with the doormat when they pulled out their badges? Animal instinct had trampled my common sense.

  “Yeah, he’s one ours," Detective Lopez said. "So you haven’t seen him?”

  “Do you have a picture?”

  “You just said you haven’t seen anyone except your neighbor and the pizza delivery kid.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, swiped a few times, then held it up so I could get a look at the guy who was, as we were speaking, being moved from a tree house to someplace else.

  I shook my head. “Never seen him before.” Before today, when he was dead in my house, that is.

  “Well, he said he was coming here. I guess he’s just late—real late. Mind if we stick around? Of course you don’t. We’ll be outside, out of your way. You won’t hardly know we’re there. We’ll be the guys in that SUV.”

  He tilted his head to where a big, black GMC was snugged up to the curb.

  “Can’t miss it,” I said.

  His everything wobbled as he laughed. “I like her, she’s funny,” he said to his partner. Then he turned back to me, serious. “You can miss it on a dark night, and that’s a fact.”

  “Yo, they never see it coming,” Bishop said.

  “This guy.” Lopez hooked a thumb at Saggy Pants. “But he’s right. We ran over a guy five times, used him as a speed bump. He never saw us coming.”

  “Not after the first time, anyways,” Bishop said.

  Lopez grinned. “You don’t want us to use you as a speed bump.”

  Yikes! “I have to go.”

  “Just when we were getting along so good. Say, you sure you haven’t seen our friend?”

  “Haven’t seen him.”

  He pointed to me with both index fingers. “Just checking. Sometimes answers change. Say, maybe you know the man our friend was looking for.”

  Mentally, I grabbed my hair and pulled. “Who? Just tell me: who?”

  He leaned back so he could get a load of the number on the house. “Seeing as you’re here and he lives here, maybe you know Mike Makris.”

  My gut took a swift ride to my shoes. “He’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

  “We know he’s not here. Know how we know?”

  “Yo, tell her,” Bishop said.

  “I’m getting to that,” Lopez muttered under his breath. To me: “We know because you reported him missing a few weeks back.”

  “Not officially,” I said. “I called them and the police didn’t want anything to do with it until he’d been missing for twenty-four hours.”

  On the day he went missing I would have welcomed police interest. But things had since snowballed in a problematic, criminal direction.

  “So is he still missing?”

  “He’s a truck driver. He’s away on business.”

  “You got a phone? You should call him, see how business is going.”

  “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. He’s out of range. Look, my father is his own man. We have our own lives.”

  “Sure you do,” Lopez said. “But you’re his kid. It’s not right for a father to be out of contact. What if something happens and you need him?”

  I grabbed the door handle and prepared to slam it in his stupid face. “Go sit in your SUV in the dark. Whatever you’re looking for, you won’t find it here.”

  Lopez put on a sad face. “We’re just trying to get a dialog going.”

  “You know what I think? I think you’re not a cop.”

  “What makes you think that? Is it the clothes? We’re vice. We don’t play by the same rules as the other departments.”

  “Those rules can get us dead,” Bishop said.

  “What are you really looking for?”

  Lopez's gaze swung from left to right, taking in the territory. “Tell you what—we’re gonna hang around, watch your place in case you have any trouble.”

  “It’s a free world,” I told him.

  “Not the whole world,” Lopez said. “Just America.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The cops were still parked at the curb, lights off, no movement inside except for the occasional flickering of their cellphones, when Takis and Donk rocked up a couple of hours later. They rattled the back door, cackling when Marika and I leaped out of our skins. The cackling stopped when Marika whipped out her not-so little friend.

  “Oh,” she said. “You two. Lucky I did not shoot you.”

  Donk puffed out his chest. “Shoot me and my uncle with avenge me.” Takis wheezed with laughter. Donk’s expression shifted to something between bewildered and offended. “What?”

  “If you had any value to Baby Dimitri you would be working for him.” Grandma’s henchman dropped onto the couch, put his feet up on the coffee table—again. I kicked them off—again. “Instead, he allows you to run away to America like a little girl.”

  “Keep talking, old man,” Donk said, eyes bulging. “I will cut you while you sleep.” Takis blew him a kiss. “I will cut off your tiny poutsa and feed it to you, then I will cut your throat! You are nobody! You are not even Baboulas’s real family. You are a cousin’s cousin’s cousin!” He clicked his fingers. “You are one of her dancing monkeys. That’s what my uncle says. Dance, monkey, dance!”

  Chapter 4

  “This isn’t funny,” Donk said.

  Takis looked from Marika to me, and back again. “I think it is funny. Raise your hand if you think it is funny.”

  Marika and I raised our hands.

  “It is so funny,” Takis said, “that I am taking a picture.” He snapped a picture with his phone, then tapped frantically on the screen with his thumbs. “Now I am sending it to Stavros and also Baby Dimitri. Nobody in Greece will have any doubts whether you are a boy or a little girl.”

  Takis had trussed up Donk in women’s underwear and slapped enough cosmetics on his face that Donk looked like he had taken a wrong turn at his usual street corner. To add to the humiliation, he was cuffed to the shower rod.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, eyes narrowing. “Is that my underwear?”

  “Who else’s?” Takis shrugged, two palms up. “If I put Marika’s underwears on him it would be like throwing a stick into a tent.” Marika flicked his ear, but it was half-hearted. She was too busy enjoying The Donk Show.

  “He’s wearing my thong!” I yelped.

  Donk stopped swearing for a moment. “It’s okay, I manscape.”

  Ugh. There was an image nobody needed.

  “You shave or wax?” Takis said, suddenly interested.

  “Who puts a razor near their balls? I go to this Bulgarian woman in Volos. She gets all excited when the Donk shows up for his waxing. I think she wants to play with my snake, if you know what I mean.”

  We all stared at him. My thong wasn’t a big hiding place—it didn't need to be—but it wasn’t toting much excess baggage right now.

  “You’re still a teenager,” I said. “It’ll grow.”

  Marika jerked her chin up. “No. No growing. The growing is over.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The next day came on fast.

  I trotted down the driveway to the mailbox. The black GMC coughed and rolled my way, electric windows humming. Lopez stuck his head out.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “No.”

  “Because it looks to us like you’re going somewhere.”

  I opened the mailbox and retrieved a lone flyer for a local plastic surgeon. I turned on one heel and hoofed it back to the house without another word.

  “What’s that?” Takis said as I wandered past, on my way upstairs.

  “A puppy,” I said.

  He frowned, turned back
to the television. Takis, Marika, and Donk were glued to Ice Road Hitchhiking Housewives. I jogged upstairs with the mail, dropped it on my parents’ bed with everything I’d retrieved yesterday. Their room was becoming a sort of sanctuary. They weren’t around but they were still here, and I found that comforting. One piece at a time, I flipped through the mail, hoping for something. What I got was junk. Dad and I paid everything online, so there were no bills.

  Downstairs, the doorbell rang.

  “Katerina,” Takis yelled, “there is someone at your door.”

  I jogged back down to find Lopez and Bishop standing on the other side. They were unkempt, unshaven, and they smelled like sweaty balls.

  “What do you want?” I said.

  “We were thinking maybe we could come in, take a look around, see if maybe our guy has been here.”

  “No.”

  “No problem.” Lopez made a face. “We’ll come in while you’re out.”

  “You can’t do that, you’re supposed to be the good guys!”

  “Vice. Different rules.”

  “Yo,” Bishop said. “No rules. Rules are for sissies.”

  “No rules,” Lopez agreed. “Except the ones we make.”

  I grabbed my phone, took a quick picture of the two cops, immediately fired the picture off to Stavros, Xander, and my Facebook feed. Call it insurance.

  “What was that?” Lopez said, shifting from side to side. He didn’t look comfortable or happy.

  “Souvenir.” I pocketed my phone. “Commemorative photo.”

  “You can’t do that, dawg,” Bishop said. “Can she?”

  “Already done,” I said. “Now go away.”

  Lopez cleared his throat. “See the thing is ... we’ve been sitting in that car since last night. It’s a real nice car—”

  “Real nice,” Bishop said.

  “—But it doesn’t have the necessities. Bathroom, kitchen, that sort of thing. Think we could come in, use the facilities, maybe get a cup of coffee?”

  I tilted my head. “Let me think about it for a moment. No.” I shut the door in their faces. If they wanted coffee and a bathroom they’d have to find a gas station or a McDonald’s, like normal derelicts.

  Eye to the peephole, I watched them traipse back to the SUV. Bishop hoisted himself into the passenger side. Lopez stopped beside the mailbox to answer his phone. For a moment he stood there, picking at a spot on his neck while he talked, then he shoved the phone back in his pocket and bolted the rest of the way. The SUV was sturdy but it lurched as he heaved himself up behind the wheel. It roared away from the curb, leaving black streaks and a low-hanging cloud of freshly brewed pollution.

  “Boy,” I said, “they sure left in a hurry.” A terrible thought cruised through my head. “Takis ... when you moved the body, where did you put it?”

  He laughed. “In the trunk of his police captain’s car.”

  “Oh crap,” I said. “Oh crap, oh shit, oh hell!” I grabbed my hair with both hands. “Are you crazy? You stuffed a dead cop in his captain’s trunk? What were you thinking?”

  “Relax, it is the perfect hiding place.”

  “How?” I hissed. “How is that perfect?”

  “A dead cop shows up in his boss’s car? Wearing makeup? Looks like his boss is up to some kinky business. They will tie him up for weeks.” He chuckled.

  “But he didn’t do it!”

  Takis put on an innocent expression. “Do we know that? No, we don’t know that. There was a dead man in your house. Anyone could have killed him. All we know is that it was not us. Maybe it was his boss. Maybe it was your neighbor. Maybe it was the mailman. We don’t know. It is better this way. Those two malakes who were here were looking for a missing cop. Now they have found him, and on their territory, they will leave us alone.” He made a face. “For now. That gives us time.”

  “For what?”

  “To leave.”

  “I can’t leave. I just got back.” Plan A was to make a U-turn at Dad’s safe, but that was before the dead cop. There was never any Plan B; the first one had seemed solid ... for quicksand.

  “You came back for business, yes?” he said. “Take care of your business and let’s go.”

  I went upstairs and took another look at the contents of Dad’s safe. The money was All-American and real. US currency was nigh on impossible to duplicate; the treasury had years of practice foiling counterfeiters. The euro was a relative neophyte, still vulnerable to the world’s underbelly.

  I duplicated the list of names, dates, countries Dad visited, taped a copy to the underside of my underwear drawer. I snapped a picture of the original and sent it to a super-secret email account I had opened last night. When I had time, I’d cross-reference everything to dates I knew Dad was away, for my own curiosity mostly. I knew he was the one using these passports, but I wanted to know how many times he’d lied to me.

  The next—and final—piece of business was to zip over to Dad’s workplace. My whole life he’d worked for Winkler’s Packing Goods, but I'd never been to his place of business. He was usually on the road, driving from one American city to another. When he wasn’t behind the wheel he was home.

  I drove there now, after telling my visitors to sit, stay. Takis followed anyway, staying at a discreet distance. No way would I ever admit it—not even under pain of torture, which was always a possibility in my family—but I was kind of glad he was there.

  “Baboulas sends me to do a job, I do it,” he had said when I first protested. “She told me to take care of you.”

  More like stalk me. Whether she didn’t trust me, or she just wanted someone to watch my back, it was all—as Dad always said—the same shit. And for once I was glad.

  Chapter 5

  Winkler’s Packing Goods was a lie. The truth was a straight-out-of-the-1950s cement block building, hunkering in the middle of what looked like it used to be a used car dealership. Now the space was dedicated to the art of renting temporary toilets. The business called itself Shitz-U.

  “It’s a play on words,” the business owner told me. “A mash up of shih tzu and U-Haul.” He was a planet contained by a blue coverall force field. His head was a ham with a comb over and a ZZ Top beard.

  “Very clever,” I said, and he grunted. “How long have you been here?”

  One of his hands went diving in that rat’s nest on his face, searching, I presumed, for one of his chins to scratch. “Coming up on twenty years. You in the market for a rental?” He hooked a thick thumb at his stock, all of which looked gently—or worse—used.

  “No, I was looking for packing supplies. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of Winkler’s Packing Goods? Someone gave me this address. But ...” I glanced over my shoulder. “... I think they must have been messing with me.”

  He shook his head, sucked saliva between graying teeth. “Nope, can’t say I have. Before I was here, this was a Winnebago dealership. Never been a packing supply company here, far as I know.”

  I pulled out my phone, swiped to a recent photo of Dad. My heart hurt just looking at him. “Ever seen him before?”

  Squint. “Nope.”

  Back into my cross-body bag the phone went. “Thanks anyway.”

  I left him to his temporary toilets and jogged back to my Jeep. Takis was parked a ways down the street in his rental van, trying not to look like a kiddie snatcher with a pocketful of candy. A car horn honked and a black GMC rolled up alongside my Jeep. I groaned.

  “You got some freak following you,” Lopez said.

  “No kidding.”

  “Hey, just trying to help you out.” He took his hands off the wheel, held them up. “Thought you should know.”

  “Gee, what a guy. That freak is with me.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  I gave him an are-you-crazy look.

  He nodded to the Shitz-U yard. “You in the market?”

  “No.” I yanked open the Jeep door, tossed my bag in.

  Lopez took a long look at the row of port
able toilets. “Something familiar about this place. It familiar to you?” he asked Bishop.

  “Nah.”

  “Who gives a crap what you think? I know there’s something about it ... Help me out,” he said to me.

  “If you don’t give a crap you’re in the wrong place.”

  He laughed, pointed his finger gun at me. “You’re funny. I know what it is now. It just came to me. This address is listed as your father’s place of employment. Thought he was a truck driver for a bubble wrap company?”

  That made two of us. “Coincidence,” I said. “Two identical addresses in the same city could happen.”

  “Think it’s a front for something else?” he said, tilting his head at the Shitz-U sign.

  “Going home now.” I climbed into the Jeep, slammed the door shut after me.

  “Hey!” He made a spinning motion with his hand. I let out an exasperated sigh and rolled down my window. “We found our guy, thought you’d like to know.”

  “Great. Goodbye.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so. It’s more complicated than that,” he said, and the GMC sped away.

  Complicated—an adjective that was getting a serious workout in my life lately. Now what? My father’s whole life was shaping up to be a lie. What did that make me?

  ~ ~ ~

  “You are Baboulas’s only granddaughter. You better get used to people following you around, like paparazzi, and stalkers, and crazy people who want to steal locks of your hair and sell your underwear in vending machines,” Marika said when I got back to the house and told her about the cops.

  Clearly she had mistaken me for somebody people cared about.

  “I didn’t ask for this.”

  “Who asks for it? Nobody, that is who. Only a crazy person would want to be wearing your shoes. They are nice shoes—” She eyed my current footwear of choice, sandals I’d snagged for a song at Nordstrom Rack five summers ago. “—But the life that goes with them ... ay-yi-yi.”

  “You’re not making me feel better.”

  “You want to shoot something? I bet that would help me.”

  I dropped onto the couch, head on my knees, and took a deep breath. “Have you heard anything from Greece?” Like maybe Dad magically appeared, suntanned and alive and sorry for not letting me know he was flying to the Seychelles for a few weeks. Or—I gulped—a ransom. Whoever was holding Dad captive had been silent so far. They had to want something, otherwise why snatch him?